You are
what you eat

The proper dining habits
make you one of the tribe

By Nadine Kam
Assistant Features Editor
Star-Bulletin

A restaurant is not so much a source of food and fun as it is a laboratory when you're an anthropologist.

For Marcus Griffin, dining out means looking beyond that laulau or mahi fillet for the profound meaning of victuals as ritual.

As far he's is concerned, there is motivation and emotion behind every food exchange, as well as a full battery of gender and cultural concerns. Griffin observed this firsthand when he took a date to Zippy's. Ophelia gobbled up all her macaroni salad and expected him to give up some of his scoop.

"I said no and the interesting thing is she was genuinely offended. She wondered, 'If this guy won't share his macaroni salad when he knows how much I like it, what does that say about the rest of everything?' "

He must have seen the light, for the two are now married. He said, "Eventually I did share. I must have learned how or I became more attuned to her needs."

Griffin will share some of his thoughts on food and society as a lecturer in the University of Hawaii Summer at Manoa series, " 'Ono Loa: Food in History and Culture."

He will teach four classes, including two with his father, Bion Griffin, professor and chairman of the UHM Anthropology Department.

The elder Griffin is in the Philippines, gathering the latest information for an Aug. 13 talk on "The Flavors That Bind: Filipino Food, Drink and Culture."

Marcus Griffin's solo courses are "Peoples of Hawai'i," focusing on attitudes among Hawaii's many ethnic groups, and "Ethnographic Field Methods," which will involve excursions into Waikiki to study the symbiosis of food, beaches and tourism.

Topics range from Pacific Rim cuisine to the tourist luau, to McDonald's. Marcus said that much of the food at McDonald's is generic, "but what's overlooked is that they also offer fruit punch and saimin.

"To me, fruit punch brings back images of pot lucks and sleeping in a park on the North Shore all summer long. It's an important symbol because it shows that the corporation is interested in participating in Hawaii society in all its diversity."

The "haole" thing to do, he said, would be to avoid acknowledging Hawaii's unique food style.

"Food should be very important to people because of how it's used to reinforce social relationships. Even in the home. Look at who is cooking and where it is being cooked. What is the relationship being reinforced by the cooking?"

In most homes, he said, cooking is done in the kitchen by women, while men stake out their territory at the backyard grill.

"Men cook outside because the kitchen is the 'women's space' and they have to keep them separate. For a woman to let a man into that space uncontested means having one less thing she has control over in that family.

"You can begin to see where gender and division of labor are socially constructed instead of biologically innate, and how much of our identities are made up. It makes it easier to find solutions to conflict."

Knowing that perhaps territorialism is the real issue behind the scoldings men get for messing up the kitchen, may make them more aware of returning pots and pans to their "proper" places.

And eating out? Sure it's an escape, not merely from the drudgery of kitchen duties, but also the obligation to create the right familial ambience.

"Cooking takes serious effort on someone's part. You have to worry about what kind of food to prepare, whose tastes to accommodate -- the kids? the husband? --When you go out you don't have to deal with any of that. You can have whatever you want."

Food was not always so academic to Griffin. "My late stepfather was Hawaiian. He taught me how to cook Hawaiian, how to spearfish, collect opihi and seaweed. I was involved with cooking as a way of creating family, cooking for luaus and weddings just for the social experience.

"It was only after I became an anthropologist that I began applying theories of identity construction, the ways food is used to reinforce social ties."

Griffin actually got off to an early start as an anthropologist. Bion whisked him to the Philippines at the age of 6 to live among the Agta people, a tribe of hunter-gatherers in Northeastern Luzon.

"I wore a loin cloth and pretended I was one of them."

Years later, he used his anthropology degree as a means to effect change when he went back to the Philippines to study reasons why the homicide rate among so many of his childhood friends was so high.

"I saw them go from being proud and self-reliant to being a marginalized culture. Alcoholism was their escape from being unable to hunt and fish, and alcoholism is a main ingredient for homicide."

He worked with the Agta on retaining land rights, and since last fall has had a private practice in New Hampshire working for Native American organizations.

But food is never far from his thoughts. The lessons of the Agta, whose source of pride was their ability to live off the land, is echoed here by every parent who finds self-worth in the ability to put food on the table.

The family luau -- in addition to being simply ono -- demonstrates individuals' skills in gathering opihi, seaweed or catching squid, or knowing where and having the moolah to get the best ingredients.

"People should think a lot about what they eat and why and what they think about other people because of what they eat.

"Spam's an interesting subject. I just had some yesterday but my friends are disgusted by it. Nobody on the mainland understands it. My grandmother in Maine cooked it like a ham once. She stuck cloves in it and baked it and that was weird to me.

"I sat there and I ate it and asked them to pass me the bread. So food, you know, food is funny stuff."